Blog Two: How To Stop the Israeli State planned Genocide
10.11.2023
The desolate spectacle of Israel committing US-armed genocide live on TV goes on and on like a nightmare. How do we sleep at night when Biden-Netanyahu have murdered sleep? The slaughter of the babes, the little children they have already intentionally traumatized and starved, haunts our nights, world-wide. The strange and unusual burn wounds of survivors, now unattended after Israel’s bombs destroyed the hospitals, get infected and eaten into by maggots. This intentional neglect, in turn, causes more deaths. Routine care for cancer and for dialysis, for heart illness and diabetes, has been bombed out of existence. Israel and the US thus kill ordinary patients, too. Operations are performed without anesthetic. The supply of medicines and equipment has been cut by Israel-USA. Fifty women give birth in this man-made hell every day in Gaza. Without health care. Already malnourished children, have now been intentionally starved for the past month, their clean running water supply intentionally cut, and these genocidal actions, in turn, cause children to diarrhea and to die for lack of a drip. All these secondary victims of Israeli and US cruelty, like the babes and grannies still buried in the rubble of their own bombed down houses, are not even counted in the official death tolls.
All this constitutes genocide.
And President Biden rejects a ceasefire? Is he mad?
He says, therefore, to Netanyahu: Go on bombing the hell out of the Palestinians in Gaza! Use up all the armaments we gave you! We will send more! $14bn more. Our arms-factory owners will grow fat as the people of Gaza die in the genocide. No ceasefire, Biden cries out! He gets his representative to veto a ceasefire at the UN Security Council. His representative alone gives the go-ahead for more genocidal bombing. This defies belief.
At the UN General Assembly, the USA and Israel can only pull along or bully or buy 12 miserable countries: two Latin American dictatorships, four right-wing countries of Europe’s twenty-seven, and six bullied Pacific island states, one with a population of 10,000. And that is it. This is why we blame Israel and the USA. They are the killers. They are doing the forcible displacement of a million people of Gaza. They are annihilating the infrastructure, including the hospitals, schools, roads, water and electric supplies. They demolish houses in the West Bank. They kidnap Palestinians, and lock them up in Israeli jails. 6,000 West Bank Palestinians are held hostage by Israel with US open collusion.
When Biden begins to pay a political price for his participation in the genocide, he starts proposing a new form of cruelty: ridiculous so-called “humanitarian pauses”. Stop the bombing in some places for some hours to let in food and water, and then when people have eaten a mouthful and sipped some water, bomb them all over again. Netanyahu goes all defiant for a week. No he will not have a humanitarian pause. He kills another thousand Palestinians. No, he says. No humanitarian pauses. He just pouts and threatens. He just goes on locking Palestinians into Gaza, starving them out of Gaza, and then bombing them and all their civilization. He, with Biden’s bombs, bombs them in the North, blaming them for staying after having been told to move, and then bombs them in the South, where he has ordered them to go so as to avoid being bombed. There, Netanyahu, with Biden’s support, has corralled them, as if they were a herd of animals, waiting to expel them into the Sinai desert in a second Nakba, or great catastrophe. His Defense Minister had already called Palestinians “human animals”. “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he said. In the West Bank, meanwhile, Netanyahu – with US aid – arms the settler thugs, who kill Palestinians, and he sends his US-armed military into the West Bank to kidnap more and more Palestinians, calling it “arresting” them. In East Jerusalem, meanwhile, Palestinian families continue to be hounded out from their homes.
Then Netanyahu supposedly concedes, agrees to a the preposterous “four hours’ pause per day in Northern Gaza”, while continuing to kill elsewhere in Gaza, before starting the generalized slaughter all over again. Until tomorrow’s pause. What is going on? How can we stop this?
First, let us check who is opposing this genocide?
First, the people of Gaza and the whole of Palestine. They are, and always are. They have done so for 75 years. Their heroes of the past have left us a legacy of struggle. Then African countries took up the struggle against these remnants of western colonization. Then world-wide began to stand with the Palestinian people.
Whole countries are now cutting ties with Israel. We listed them yesterday.
In a parliamentary address Tuesday, South Africa’s foreign minister Naledi Pandor accused Israel of “the murder of children and women”. She called for the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant against Netanyahu and his top brass. She rightly calls for an immediate, comprehensive ceasefire.
And yet, it is not just whole countries who recall their ambassadors, but people in their unions and organizations, world-wide, are rising up.
There have been huge marches every week in London. In Turkey over a million people demonstrated. A huge demonstration was held at the NATO base when Biden’s assistant, Blinken landed there for talks. Blinken was slighted by being received only by low-level Turkish officers. In Indonesia, in Mexico, in New Zealand, in Australia, in Japan, in South Africa, in Libya, in Jordan, in Yemen, in Spain, even in France where it was illegal to demonstrate in favour of Palestine. In the USA huge demonstrations have been held in all cities.
In Britain, at the Israeli arms supplier, the Elbit Systems Factory, in Kent, over 100 members of the coalition called “Workers for a Free Palestine” blockaded the factory. Britain is, after the US, a major arms supplier to Israel. This action was in response to 30 Palestinian trade unions’ urgent call to labor organizations around the world to take action, including direct actions to halt arms deliveries to the Israeli military.
In the USA, 75 workers who support Palestine this week blocked the gates of the Boeing factory in St. Charles, Missouri.
Pro-Palestine demonstrators scaled on to and blocked a ship carrying arms to Israel in Oakland harbour near San Francisco in the USA by sabotaging its anchor. They describe themselves as concerned pro-Palestinians, including concerned Jewish people.
A protest in the USA blocked the Harbour of Tacoma in Washington State to prevent another ship leaving for Israel with arms.
In another high-profile demonstration, Jewish Voices for Peace, in support of an immediate ceasefire, organized hundreds of protesters to hold a sit-in on the main concourse of the New York Grand Central Station, a huge transport hub. It caused a massive hold-up in circulation. Police arrested hundreds of the demonstrators.
At the US Congress building, there was a huge sit-in of Jewish people against the Israeli State. Their slogans were “Not in our name!” and they called for a ceasefire. It was so big that over 500 protesters were arrested.
Inside Congress, itself, while Blinken was giving testimony on why the US should give Israel a further $14bn in military “aid” in addition to the annual $3 billion, a protest was held. Members of Code Pink and other organizations, sat in the public seats just behind Blinken in Congress and each raised both hands painted in red, as if blood-stained. He looked caught red-handed. He was arguing for more bombs, even as the blood-red-stained-hands images behind him haunted him. In turn, in discipline, a lone protester would call out a precise demand: “Stop bombing Gaza”. Blinken, drowned out. Guards would remove her. Then Blinken would start to speak again. Red-blood-stained hands behind him. Another lone protester would call out “Ceasefire now!” Blinken would flinch. Guards would remove the next protester. And so on. Medea Benjamin, who both Lalit member Ragini Kistnasamy and I know from previous Palestine support and anti-bases events, told the press after she had been carried out by the guards that the protesters had all experienced unexpected support from the staff at the Congress.
She was right. Within a few days, 100 Congressional Staffers had a walk out, saying their constituencies were demanding an immediate ceasefire.
Even workers at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have signed a petition. 630 called for a ceasefire. They said they were “alarmed and disheartened at the numerous violations of international law; laws which aim to protect civilians, medical and media personnel, as well as schools, hospitals, and places of worship”.
A top civil servant in the State Department, Joss Paul, has resigned, and called what Israel is doing “a textbook case of genocide”.
Protesters have painted “Ceasefire!” on the base of the Eiffel Tower where the Israeli flag had its colours hoisted. Protesters have flocked on to the Statue of Liberty island in New York City. A demonstration was held on board Japan’s Peaceboat.
All these actions and demonstrations add up towards pressure on government, and towards stopping the genocide. We have to keep it up. We have to do our bit.
The Prime Minister of Mauritius has not yet responded to LALIT’s call to cut off all diplomatic ties. See our Press Statement, which LALIT sent to the Prime Minister.
Lindsey Collen
for LALIT
